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(This is from Informaition Week Daily - An e-mail I get on a daily basis)
Though Microsoft has dominated headlines the last few days with
the debut of Windows XP, the company has another major release in
the works: the Xbox--a new game console due Nov. 15. The Xbox is
Microsoft's first foray into the $20 billion-a-year global
video-game market, and represents a massive investment for the
company. Microsoft is expected to ship over a million of the $299
boxes by year's end and spend more than half a billion dollars in
advertising to support the launch. But there may already be a
problem: Demo units installed in stores across the country are
reportedly plagued with serious bugs.
"Sometimes it just shuts off," says Anthony Langley, an employee
in a Target department store in Germantown, Md. "It'll be running
fine and then it'll conk out." Langley says he regularly has to
reboot the machine to get it working again. And an employee of
the Bowie, Md., Target says the machine wouldn't run at all. "It
was defective and we had to send it back," he says. "I haven't
even seen what the graphics look like, aside from the
commercials."
According to a Microsoft representative, there is no problem with
the system, and the only trouble the company's been aware of so
far has been the fault of users. "The problem was that the
retailers had not hooked them up correctly," he says, adding that
there are no plans to delay the release of the system. Microsoft
has released a statement stating that with over 10,000 demo
machines in retail stores, there are bound to be a couple of
problems; it denied that any problems were systemic.
Yet an unscientific random survey of 10 Toys R Us locations in
eight states found that two out of 10 stores had experienced
problems with the Xbox. "It looks like it's jittery, then it'll
stop," says Aaron Baylor, an associate at a store in Phoenix.
"You have to reset it." He says a friend at another Toys R Us in
the area has experienced similar problems, and the whole thing is
making him worry about the upcoming release. "When I get a brand
new system in that's a week or two old, and it starts to lock up,
that worries me." - David M. Ewalt
For more on computer games
Microsoft To Broaden Ties With Sega
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eEqf0BdZjp0V20TI50Ap
The Latest Sensation In Gaming
http://update.informationweek.com/cgi-bin4/flo?y=eEqf0BdZjp0V20OlZ0Aw
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